An unusual shipment of penguin poo brooms is heading from Cambridge all the way to the Antarctic.

The UK's most remote post office is awaiting receipt of hundreds of items, including the brooms used for cleaning up penguin mess.

A team of four scientists will take delivery of the haul in Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island, where the group will be based in the next four months.

Items being shipped to the remote location include tourist merchandise and scientific equipment for the team.

Hundreds of items are being sent to the UK's most remote post office at Port Lockroy (Image: UKAHT)

Seven brooms have also been sent from the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust office in Cambridge, to help with the cleaning of guano - seabird droppings.

Port Lockroy was home to explorers and whalers before becoming the first permanent British base to be established on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Built in 1944, it was used as a science base until 1962, when it closed permanently.

Restoration began in the 1990s and since 2006 it has been managed as a post office and museum by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.

(Image: UKAHT)

The island is deserted for most of the year but comes to life during the Antarctic summer when the trust's four staff are shipped in and thousands of tourists begin arriving.

A team of scientists will spend November to March - the Antarctic summer - manning the post office.

season 16/17 (Image: UKAHT)

This year's all-female postal team, whose names have not yet been released, will head out to the base in November and will also carry out scientific work, including monitoring penguins, before returning to the UK in March.

Supplies are delivered via cruise ships, then carried and sorted by the team on shore.

(Image: UKAHT)

Last year's post workers got through 337 tins of food as they franked 63,050 stamps for the tourists' postcards and sold 2,361 soft toy penguins.

They got through 55 litres of bitumen paint to protect and maintain the settlement's historic buildings, and counted penguin nests and surveyed artefacts.

(Image: UKAHT)

Last year, the trust shipped 1,200 boxes of goods to Port Lockroy. This year's supplies are a "top-up" so only 400 are being sent.

They left the UK on a container ship on September 4 and arrived on the Falkland Islands on September 28.

Supplies are then delivered throughout the season by the cruise ships carrying tourists.